My Best Friend's Exorcism(85)

It was late afternoon, and the world was already getting dark. The house was quiet. Abby walked into the guest bedroom to check on Gretchen. She was lying on the bed, completely still. Abby leaned over to check on her.

“Please . . .” Gretchen moaned. “Make it stop . . .”

“It’s going to be okay,” Abby said. “He’s getting someone who can help.”

“Make it stop . . . make it stop . . . make it stop . . .” Gretchen moaned.

Abby went to hug her and Gretchen suddenly burst out laughing.

“It’s so easy,” she said, smiling cruelly, and Abby felt a rock sinking slowly from her chest to her gut. “Did you think Gretchen was still here? She’s been gone for a long time, and you two stand there and pompously intone prayers to a God you don’t even believe in and—what? You expected my head to spin around? You have the imagination of children. I barely had to reveal one-tenth of my majesty to dispense with that poser. Some silly voices here, a push there, a nudge, a wiggle, and now it’s just you and me. As it was in the beginning, so it shall be in the end.”

Gretchen smiled up at Abby, humming a little tune.

“I think we’re alone now,” she sang softly, eyes locked on Abby’s. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone aroun-ound. I think we’re alone now, the beating of our hearts is the only sou-ound . . .”





I Would Die 4 U


“You know what’s going to happen,” Gretchen said. “My parents are already looking for me. Can you imagine the choice tantrum my mom threw when she came home from the game, all full of crab dip and fried chicken, only to find her precious perfect baby girl missing? Beloved family pet dead? Blood all over her clean white carpets? I mean, those will definitely have to be replaced. They’re going to call the police and the first person they’re going to wonder about is that girl—what’s her name?”

Abby crouched down and pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. This isn’t Gretchen, she told herself. Gretchen is someplace else.

“That girl,” Gretchen continued. “You know, the one dealing drugs? The one who almost got expelled? The one who stole the dead baby from the hospital for some kind of sick sex orgy? Oh, right, Abigail Rivers. Is she home? Ring-ring! Hello, Mrs. Rivers, at some point in the last twenty-four hours while you were being total white trash, did you notice anything different about your daughter? She’s gone? Now, I know we’re only the Mount Pleasant Police Department and we don’t have two brain cells to rub together, but this might be a clue. Hey, Cletus? Do you think the crazy pizza-faced girl might have something to do with the abduction and possible murder of this nice, sweet, upstanding, and—dare I say—smoking-hot girl? Well, Retus, I think it’s worth a look.”

Abby began to rock back and forth. This isn’t Gretchen, she told herself over and over. This isn’t Gretchen.

“They’re going to come for you,” Gretchen said, and she didn’t look cold anymore. In fact, she looked like she was exactly where she’d wanted to be all along. “They’re going to find you here with me tied to the bed, and they’re going to put you in a facility. Your parents will be the most hated people in Charleston. You’re such a schizo it’s going to be legendary. People are going to remember the dead-baby-stealing, kidnapping druggie from Albemarle Academy forever. Even after they finally let you out, even after you’re old and dried up and thirty—even then, you’ll never get to be anyone else. You’re always going to be the same tainted, pathetic spaz you are today.”

Abby leapt to her feet and ran for the living room. The thing using Gretchen’s voice had wormed its way into her head and squeezed Abby’s brain, making it pulse blood. She needed quiet. She went to the front window and watched the street grow dark. A man in a red raincoat passed by, walking his dog. A plane left contrails in the violet sky. Time passed. Eventually the streetlights blinked on and that’s when Abby had to face facts: the exorcist wasn’t coming back. She was all alone. A demon was waiting in the next room, and no one was going to help her.

“Abby,” the Gretchen-Thing called out. “Can you hear me, Abby?”

Abby rested her forehead against the glass. There was no way out. She had ruined everything.

“What if I let you go?” she called desperately. “I’ll let you go, and we’ll just leave. We’ll go to a neighbor and call the cops and you promise to tell them you took the baby. And then we’ll go our separate ways, and you won’t hear from me ever again.”

“Oh, we’re way beyond that now, Abby,” Andras said. “You know why? Because you’ve truly pissed me off. I’m tied to this Christing bed, but you’re the one who’s trapped.”

Abby shook her head, trying to wish everything back the way it was before she screwed it all up so badly.

“They’re going to be here soon,” Andras continued. “Are you ready to go far, far away? I think you’re way past Southern Pines now. And once you’re gone, I’m going to have so much fun. I think Margaret might become another teen tragedy. I’ve barely even started on Wallace Stoney. Maybe Nikki Bull can be the first girl at your school to get AIDS.”

Abby looked down at the coffee table. Sitting on a pile of out-of-date National Geographics was Brother Lemon’s Bible. She picked it up. His cheat sheet was shoved into its pages. She pulled it out.